China to adopt new jobless rate method in 2006

SHANGHAI - China will release an unemployment rate next year calculated under a method that could double the figure from levels now reported, according to a report in the official China Daily on Saturday.

China will start to announce unemployment figures derived using the "investigation method" starting in the second half of next year, the paper reported, citing Yu Xiuqin, a spokeswoman for the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics.

"The unemployment index calculated through investigation will be much bigger than the current urban-registered unemployment rate," Yu told the newspaper.

"The change was done to follow international practices." Figures using the new method will be more accurate and about double current ones, Wang Xiaolu, deputy director of the National Economic Research Institute under the China Reform Foundation, told the China Daily.

Yu said unemployment rates using the investigation method have been calculated in China since 2000, but said those figures have never been publicly released.

China most recently reported that urban unemployment in September was 4.2 percent -- an official measure that is narrowly defined and many believe would be much higher if a more inclusive method were used.

The current method of counting the unemployed includes only people who register with the government.

Thus it fails to count anyone who fails to register, including most of the millions of jobless who illegally come to look for work in China's big cities, in violation of the country's strict residency laws.

- REUTERS